Martha C. Nussbaum received her BA from NYU and her MA and PhD from Harvard. She has taught at Harvard, Brown, and Oxford Universities and is currently the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics, appointed in the Department of Philosophy and the Law School. She is an Associate in the Classics Department, the Divinity School, and the Political Science Department and a Member of the Committee on Southern Asian Studies. Professor Nussbaum is internationally renowned for her work in Ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, feminist philosophy, political philosophy, and philosophy and the arts and is actively engaged in teaching and advising students in these subjects. She has received numerous awards and honorary degrees and is the author of many books and articles. For an up-to-date description, please see her University of Chicago Law School webpage here. Please direct all mail to her Law School address. Professor Nussbaum's CV is available from her upon request.
Media
Martha C. Nussbaum, selected interviews, lectures, and podcasts
Recent Courses
PHIL 33029 Justice for Animals in Ethics and Law
Animals are in trouble all over the world. Intelligent sentient beings suffer countless injustices at human hands: the cruelties of the factory farming industry, poaching and trophy hunting, assaults on the habitats of many creatures, and innumerable other instances of cruelty and neglect. Human domination is everywhere: in the seas, where marine mammals die from ingesting plastic, from entanglement with fishing lines, and from lethal harpooning; in the skies, where migratory birds die in large numbers from air pollution and collisions with buildings; and, obviously, on the land, where the habitats of many large mammals have been destroyed almost beyond repair. Addressing these large problems requires dedicated work and effort. But it also requires a good normative theory to direct our efforts.
This class is theoretical and philosophical. Because all good theorizing requires scientific knowledge, we will be reading a good deal of current science about animal abilities and animal lives. But the focus will be on normative theory. We will study four theories currently directing practical efforts in animal welfare: the anthropocentric theory of the Non-Human Rights Project; the Utilitarian theory of Jeremy Bentham, J. S. Mill, and Peter Singer; the Kantian theory of Christine Korsgaard; and an approach using the Capabilities Approach, recently developed by Martha Nussbaum. We will then study legal implications and current legal problems, in both domestic and international law.
This is a new 1L elective, in connection with the Law School’s new program in Animal Law. Law students and PhD students may register without permission. MA
students and undergrads need the instructor’s permission, and to receive permission they must be third or fourth-year Philosophy concentrator with a letter of recommendation from a faculty member in the Philosophy Department. Because all assessment is by an eight-hour take-home exam at the end of the class, the letter should describe, among other things, the student’s ability in self-monitored disciplined preparation.
PHIL 33029 Justice for Animals in Ethics and Law
Animals are in trouble all over the world. Intelligent sentient beings suffer countless injustices at human hands: the cruelties of the factory farming industry, poaching and trophy hunting, assaults on the habitats of many creatures, and innumerable other instances of cruelty and neglect. Human domination is everywhere: in the seas, where marine mammals die from ingesting plastic, from entanglement with fishing lines, and from lethal harpooning; in the skies, where migratory birds die in large numbers from air pollution and collisions with buildings; and, obviously, on the land, where the habitats of many large mammals have been destroyed almost beyond repair. Addressing these large problems requires dedicated work and effort. But it also requires a good normative theory to direct our efforts.
This class is theoretical and philosophical. Because all good theorizing requires scientific knowledge, we will be reading a good deal of current science about animal abilities and animal lives. But the focus will be on normative theory. We will study four theories currently directing practical efforts in animal welfare: the anthropocentric theory of the Non-Human Rights Project; the Utilitarian theory of Jeremy Bentham, J. S. Mill, and Peter Singer; the Kantian theory of Christine Korsgaard; and an approach using the Capabilities Approach, recently developed by Martha Nussbaum. We will then study legal implications and current legal problems, in both domestic and international law.
This is a new 1L elective, in connection with the Law School’s new program in Animal Law. Law students and PhD students may register without permission. MA
students and undergrads need the instructor’s permission, and to receive permission they must be third or fourth-year Philosophy concentrator with a letter of recommendation from a faculty member in the Philosophy Department. Because all assessment is by an eight-hour take-home exam at the end of the class, the letter should describe, among other things, the student’s ability in self-monitored disciplined preparation.
PHIL 59903 Modern Indian Political and Legal Thought
India has made important contributions to political and legal thought, most of which are too little-known in the West. These contributions draw on ancient traditions, Hindu and Buddhist, but transform them, often radically, to fit the needs of an anti-imperial nation aspiring to inclusiveness and equality. We will study the thought of Rabindranath Tagore (Nationalism, The Religion of Man, selected literary works); Mohandas Gandhi (Hind Swaraj (Indian Self-Rule), Autobiography, and selected speeches); B. R. Ambedkar, the chief architect of the Indian Constitution (The Annihilation of Caste, The Buddha and his Dhamma, and selected speeches and interventions in the Constituent Assembly); and, most recently, Amartya Sen, whose The Idea of Justice is rooted, as he describes, both in ancient Indian traditions and in the thought of Tagore. We will periodically contrast the thought of the founding generation with the ideas of the Hindu Right, dominant today. (I)
This is a seminar open to all law students, and to others by permission. This class requires a major paper of 20-25 pages.
PHIL 50250 Greek Tragedy and Philosophy
Ancient Greek tragedy has been of continuous interest to Western philosophers, whether they love it or hate it. But they do not agree about what it is and does, or about what insights it offers. This seminar will study the tragic festivals and a select number of tragedies, also consulting some modern studies of ancient Greek tragedy. Then we shall turn to philosophical accounts of the tragic genre, including those of Plato, Aristotle, the Greek and Roman Stoics (especially Seneca), Lessing, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Iris Murdoch, Sartre, and Bernard Williams. (III)
Method of evaluation: A seminar paper of 20-25 pages and an oral presentation preceded by a short paper of 5-7 pages.
This class is offered on the Law School’s academic calendar. The first class will be Tuesday, September 26. Admission by permission of the instructor. Permission must be sought in writing by August 21 to martha_nussbaum@law.uchicago.edu.
An undergraduate major in philosophy or some equivalent solid philosophy preparation, plus my permission. This is a 500 level course. PhD students in Philosophy, Social Thought, Classics, and Political Theory may enroll. MA students need permission, and the MAPH and MAPSS programs discourage 500 level courses in a student’s first quarter. Law students with ample philosophical background are welcome to enroll but should ask Professor Nussbaum first. Undergraduates may not enroll.
PHIL 21102/31102 Opera as Idea and As Performance
Is opera an archaic and exotic pageant for fanciers of overweight canaries, or a relevant art form of great subtlety and complexity that has the power to be revelatory? In this course of eight sessions, jointly taught by Professor Martha Nussbaum and Anthony Freud, General Director of Lyric Opera of Chicago, we explore the multi-disciplinary nature of this elusive and much-maligned art form, with its four hundred-year-old European roots, discussing both historic and philosophical contexts and the practicalities of interpretation and production in a very un-European, twenty-first century city.
Anchoring each session around a different opera, we will be joined by a variety of guest experts, one each week, including a director, a conductor, a designer and two singers, to enable us to explore different perspectives.
The list of operas to be discussed include Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppaea, Mozart's Don Giovanni, Rossini’s La Cenerentola, Verdi's Don Carlos, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, Wagner's Die Meistersinger, Strauss's Elektra, and Britten's Billy Budd. (A) (I)
REMARK: Students do not need to be able to read music, but some antecedent familiarity with opera in performance or through recordings would be extremely helpful.
ASSIGNMENTS: In general, for each week we will require you to listen carefully to the opera of that week. Multiple copies of the recommended recordings will be available in the library. But you should feel free to use your own recordings, or to buy them if you prefer. There will also be brief written materials assigned, and posted on the course canvas site. No books are required for purchase. Because listening is the main thing, we will try to keep readings brief and to make recommendations for further reading should you want to do more.
CLASS STRUCTURE: In general we will each make remarks for about twenty minutes each, then interview the guest of the week, with ample room for discussion.
REQUIREMENTS: Ph.D. students and law students will write one long paper at the end (20-25 pages), based on a prospectus submitted earlier. Other students will write one shorter paper (5-7 pages) and one longer paper (12-15 pages), the former due in week 4 and the latter during reading period.
NOTE: Ph.D. students in the Philosophy Department and the Music Department and all law students (both J. D. and LL.M.) may enroll without permission. All other students will be selected by lottery up to the number feasible given CA arrangements.
PHIL 51404 Global Inequality
Global income and wealth are highly concentrated. The richest 2% of the population own about half of the global assets. Per capita income in the United States is around $47,000 and in Europe it is around $30,500, while in India it is $3,400 and in Congo, it is $329. There are equally unsettling inequalities in longevity, health, and education.
In this interdisciplinary seminar, we ask what duties nations and individuals have to address these inequalities and what are the best strategies for doing so. What role must each country play in helping itself? What is the role of international agreements and agencies, of NGOs, of political institutions, and of corporations in addressing global poverty? How do we weigh policies that emphasize growth against policies that emphasize within-country equality, health, or education?
In seeking answers to these questions, the class will combine readings on the law and economics of global development with readings on the philosophy of global justice. A particular focus will be on the role that legal institutions, both domestic and international, play in discharging these duties. For, example, we might focus on how a nation with natural resources can design legal institutions to ensure they are exploited for the benefit of the citizens of the country. (I)
Students will be expected to write a paper, which may qualify for substantial writing credit. This is a seminar scheduled through the Law School, but we are happy to admit by permission about ten non-law students.
PHIL 55818 Hellenistic Ethics
The three leading schools of the Hellenistic era (starting in Greece in the late fourth century B. C. E. and extending through the second century C. E. in Rome) – Epicureans, Skeptics, and Stoics – produced philosophical work of lasting value, frequently neglected because of the fragmentary nature of the Greek evidence and people’s (unjustified) contempt for Roman philosophy. We will study in a detailed and philosophically careful way the major ethical arguments of all three schools. Topics to be addressed include: the nature and role of pleasure; the role of the fear of death in human life; other sources of disturbance (such as having definite ethical beliefs?); the nature of the emotions and their role in a moral life; the nature of appropriate action; the meaning of the injunction to “live in accordance with nature.” If time permits we will say something about Stoic political philosophy and its idea of global duty. Major sources (read in English) will include the three surviving letters of Epicurus and other fragments; the skeptical writings of Sextus Empiricus; the presentation of Stoic ideas in the Greek biographer Diogenes Laertius and the Roman philosophers Cicero and Seneca. (I) (III)
*This class will begin on Tuesday, September 27 (one day before the rest of the Law classes begin). Attendance for the class is required.
This class requires a 20-25 page paper and an in-class presentation.
Admission by permission of the instructor. Permission must be sought in writing by September 15. The class meets on the law school calendar and therefore begins the week of September 19. PhD students in Philosophy, Classics, and Political theory do not need permission to enroll.
Prerequisite for others: An undergraduate major in philosophy or some equivalent solid philosophy preparation, comparable to that of first-year PhD students, plus my permission. This is a 500 level course.
PHIL 25209/35209 Emotions, Reason, and Law
Emotions figure in many areas of the law, and many legal doctrines (from reasonable provocation in homicide to mercy in criminal sentencing) invite us to think about emotions and their relationship to reason. In addition, some prominent theories of the limits of law make reference to emotions. (Thus Lord Devlin and, more recently, Leon Kass have argued that the disgust of the average member of society is a sufficient reason for rendering a practice illegal, even though it does no harm to others. J. S. Mill and Herbert Hart argue against this view, but preserve a role for some emotions in the law.) Emotions, however, are all too rarely studied closely, with the result that both theory and doctrine are often confused.
The first part of this course will study major theories of emotion, asking about the relationship between emotion and cognition, focusing on philosophical accounts, but also learning from anthropology, psychology, and psychoanalytic thought. We will ask how far emotions embody cognitions, and of what type, and then we will ask whether there is reason to consider some or all emotions “irrational” in a normative sense.
We then turn to the criminal law and select areas of constitutional law, asking how specific emotions figure in doctrine and theory: anger, fear, compassion, disgust, guilt, and shame. Legal areas considered will include self-defense, reasonable provocation, mercy, victim impact statements, sodomy laws, sexual harassment, shame-based punishments, equal protection, the role of constitutions in warding off fear, shame, and stigma.
Other topics will be included as time permits. (A) (I)
Undergraduates may enroll only with the permission of the instructor. All other students may enroll without permission.
Requirements: regular class attendance; an 8 hour take-home final exam OR, if special permission is given, a 20-25 page paper.
BECAUSE THE LAW SCHOOL NOW BEGINS THE SPRING QUARTER BEFORE OTHER UNITS, AND ENDS EARLIER TOO. PLEASE BE AWARE THAT ANYONE WISHING TO TAKE THE CLASS HAS TO BE WILLING TO ATTEND CLASS STARTING ON MARCH 21, PRESUMABLY IN PERSON.
PHIL 59903 Modern Indian Political and Legal Thought
India has made important contributions to political and legal thought, most of which are too little-known in the West. These contributions draw on ancient traditions, Hindu and Buddhist, but transform them, often radically, to fit the needs of an anti-imperial nation aspiring to inclusiveness and equality. We will study the thought of Rabindranath Tagore (Nationalism, The Religion of Man, selected literary works); Mohandas Gandhi (Hind Swaraj (Indian Self-Rule), Autobiography, and selected speeches); B. R. Ambedkar, the chief architect of the Indian Constitution (The Annihilation of Caste, The Buddha and his Dhamma, and selected speeches and interventions in the Constituent Assembly); and, most recently, Amartya Sen, whose The Idea of Justice is rooted, as he describes, both in ancient Indian traditions and in the thought of Tagore. (I)
This course meets the CS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Students not from Law or Philosophy need instructor's permission. Undergraduates are not eligible.
PHIL 53025 Philosophy of Animal Rights
A close study of some recent philosophical classics about animal ethics and animal rights, including Christine Korsgaard’s Fellow Creatures, Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka’s Zoopolis, and a manuscript of my own, Justice for Animals, that is due at the end of 2021. We will also read some of the recent work by scientists such as Frans De Waal, Mark Bekoff, and Victoria Braithwaite on animal cognition.
This course meets the CS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Admission by permission of the instructor. Permission must be sought in writing at least ten days before the beginning of Law School classes, Monday, September 20. The class will be offered on the Law School calendar.
An undergraduate major in philosophy or some equivalent solid philosophy preparation. Ph.D. students in Philosophy and Political Theory may enroll without permission.
PHIL 21102/31102 Opera as Idea and As Performance
Is opera an archaic and exotic pageant for fanciers of overweight canaries, or a relevant art form of great subtlety and complexity that has the power to be revelatory? In this course of eight sessions, jointly taught by Professor Martha Nussbaum and Anthony Freud, General Director of Lyric Opera of Chicago, we explore the multi-disciplinary nature of this elusive and much-maligned art form, with its four hundred-year-old European roots, discussing both historic and philosophical contexts and the practicalities of interpretation and production in a very un-European, twenty-first century city.
Anchoring each session around a different opera, we will be joined by a variety of guest experts, one each week, including a director, a conductor, a designer and two singers, to enable us to explore different perspectives.
The list of operas to be discussed include Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppaea, Mozart's Don Giovanni, Rossini’s La Cenerentola, Verdi's Don Carlos, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, Wagner's Die Meistersinger, Strauss's Elektra, and Britten's Billy Budd. (A) (I)
REMARK: Students do not need to be able to read music, but some antecedent familiarity with opera in performance or through recordings would be extremely helpful.
ASSIGNMENTS: In general, for each week we will require you to listen carefully to the opera of that week. Multiple copies of the recommended recordings will be available in the library. But you should feel free to use your own recordings, or to buy them if you prefer. There will also be brief written materials assigned, and posted on the course canvas site. No books are required for purchase. Because listening is the main thing, we will try to keep readings brief and to make recommendations for further reading should you want to do more.
CLASS STRUCTURE: In general we will each make remarks for about twenty minutes each, then interview the guest of the week, with ample room for discussion.
REQUIREMENTS: Ph.D. students and law students will write one long paper at the end (20-25 pages), based on a prospectus submitted earlier. Other students will write one shorter paper (5-7 pages) and one longer paper (12-15 pages), the former due in week 4 and the latter during reading period.
NOTE: Ph.D. students in the Philosophy Department and the Music Department and all law students (both J. D. and LL.M.) may enroll without permission. All other students will be selected by lottery up to the number feasible given CA arrangements.
PHIL 51404 Global Inequality
Global income and wealth are highly concentrated. The richest 2% of the population own about half of the global assets. Per capita income in the United States is around $47,000 and in Europe it is around $30,500, while in India it is $3,400 and in Congo, it is $329. There are equally unsettling inequalities in longevity, health, and education.
In this interdisciplinary seminar, we ask what duties nations and individuals have to address these inequalities and what are the best strategies for doing so. What role must each country play in helping itself? What is the role of international agreements and agencies, of NGOs, of political institutions, and of corporations in addressing global poverty? How do we weigh policies that emphasize growth against policies that emphasize within-country equality, health, or education?
In seeking answers to these questions, the class will combine readings on the law and economics of global development with readings on the philosophy of global justice. A particular focus will be on the role that legal institutions, both domestic and international, play in discharging these duties. For, example, we might focus on how a nation with natural resources can design legal institutions to ensure they are exploited for the benefit of the citizens of the country.
Students will be expected to write a paper, which may qualify for substantial writing credit. This is a seminar scheduled through the Law School, but we are happy to admit by permission about ten non-law students.
PHIL 50250 Tragedy and Philosophy
Ancient Greek tragedy has been of continuous interest to philosophers, whether they love it or hate it. But they do not agree about what it is and does, or about what insights it offers. This seminar will study the tragic festivals and a select number of tragedies, also consulting some modern studies of ancient Greek tragedy. Then we shall turn to philosophical accounts of the tragic genre, including those of Plato, Aristotle, the Greek and Roman Stoics (especially Seneca), Lessing, Schlegel, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Iris Murdoch, Sartre, and Bernard Williams. If we have time we will include some study of ancient Greek comedy and its philosophical significance.
Admission by permission of the instructor. Permission must be sought in writing by September 15.
An undergraduate major in philosophy or some equivalent solid philosophy preparation, plus my permission. This is a 500 level course. Ph.D. students in Philosophy, Classics, and Political Theory may enroll without permission. Law students with ample philosophical background are welcome to enroll but should ask me first. Undergraduates may not enroll.
For full list of Martha C. Nussbaum's courses back to the 2012-13 academic year, see our searchable course database.